Global controversies over outdoor advertising

As outdoor display advertising, or out-of-home advertising as some industry sources call it, is fast migrating to flashy digital displays on strategically placed billboards to exploit high traffic volumes and the concentration of potential target markets such as  young people – often even on school grounds – age-old controversies are again flaring up all over; from Paris to Cape Town and a number of states in the US.

In Cape Town the metropolitan council last week finally won a legal battle, dating back to June 2009, to have nine billboards it claimed were erected illegally to be taken down.

And, in Paris large, imposing advertising billboards are to be banned from the centre of the city under a new plan by the city council to cut the size of ad hoardings by a third in the next two years.

In addition to the reduction in allowable size of billboards, hoardings will have to “be at least 25m apart, increasing to 60m on the périphérique ring road and no ads are permitted within 50m of a school.”

The announcement is also using this opportunity to include an innovative way to hide building sites and simultaneously fund public art ; “temporary advertisements, up to 16m², would be allowed on the side of buildings being renovated, provided the advertiser also pays for an artist to decorate the rest of the scaffold.”

In the latest Cape Town-development objections revolved around matters of physical safety and degradation of the aesthetics of the environment. In many instances world-wide the objections have a moral and/or ethical basis.

Towards the end of last year billboards in Cape Town, with sexually suggestive messages advertising a strip club were ordered to be taken down by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Consumers complained that the billboard was offensive, the ASA said, adding that the near naked and pornographic image was in a public space where young and vulnerable children were exposed to it.

The complainants had said it also demeaned and objectified women by portraying them as sex objects and contained wording that encouraged thought patterns which justified cheating and extramarital affairs.

Relevant clauses of the Code of Advertising Practice were considered by the authority, including those of offensive advertising, gender and children.

Revival of an old problem

Controversies surrounding billboards date back at least  three-quarters of a century to their use in 1934 by the then Nazi-party in Germany to persuade voters to allow chancellor Adolf Hitler to also occupy the position of  president in the reich.

In the early 1950s and during the mid 1960s   billboards again became a hot topic of controversy in the United States. In the 1950s various states were putting up a fight for control over billboards to protect the image of their scenic heritage. By 1965 then president Johnson asked the US Congress to ban billboards and unsightly junkyards along federal highways in a drive for highway beautification.

At present proposed bills, drafted and sponsored by billboard companies, are on the table of both the US senate and congress aimed at significantly loosening the states’ regulations that limit clear-cutting of public trees near billboards.  The industry-sponsored proposal also contained a radical provision that directly overrode local regulations restricting electronic billboards -- those billboards that change messages every eight seconds.

Some problems with billboards.

A recent article on the internet by one of the many organisations opposing the changes to the controls over billboards highlights some of the key considerations surrounding the issue:

The state of North Carolina for instance has over 8,000 billboards along interstate and state highways.  Once erected, billboards do not go away.  They last for generations.  The law requires that if government wants to remove a billboard, taxpayers must pay its value.  For an electronic billboard, that can be half a  million dollars.  “Our state statutes need to recognise the critical role that local governments play in regulating billboards, and protecting the attractiveness of towns, cities, and rural areas,” the article states;

Billboard messages cannot be controlled.  Too often, advertising on billboards is for alcohol and sex businesses that have a constitutional right, just like other businesses, to advertise.

Excessive clear-cutting of public trees to increase the time that billboards can be viewed is bad policy.   State regulations currently allow over a half acre of tree and vegetation clearing for a two-sided billboard.   Isn't that enough?  Tourists comment on the beauty of the state.   How will increased tree cutting enhance motorists' views?  Businesses, industries, and residents often depend on trees to buffer them from busy highways.  Increased clear-cutting will remove more of these buffers. Additional clear-cutting will also have negative environmental impacts, since trees remove pollutants from the air as well as from stormwater.

Impact on children

There is also growing concern in many countries, including South Africa, about the impact  that billboards and other forms of out-of-home advertising -- the only form of advertising you cannot turn off or ignore -- have on children.

In the case of the billboards advertising the strip club in Cape Town, some of the complaints lodged with ASA objected to the fact that there were three schools within a 1km radius of one of them in Kloof Nek Road and it was close to a children’s park.

In April the ASA also ruled that a Mavericks billboard showing a scantily clad woman performing a lap dance was offensive. In its ruling the ASA said it was not condemning advertising of adult entertainment venues. However the billboard in question was “inappropriately placed in a busy public road which was used by people of all ages.”

In Los Angeles, Paramount Pictures is removing billboards promoting an upcoming film by rapper 50 Cent after community activists complained the signs promoted gun violence near schools. The billboards for Get Rich or Die Tryin depict 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, holding a gun in his left hand and a microphone in his right. At least two were near schools.

In the United Kingdom prime minister David Cameron is preparing new curbs on “unscrupulous” companies and shops that expose children to sexualised advertisements and exploit “pester power” to sell goods.

Businesses have been warned that they face new rules to tackle what the prime minister has described as “the commercialisation and sexualisation” of childhood.

Companies will be banned from using children and teenagers as “brand ambassadors” to promote toys and clothes among their peers.

There could also be a ban on posters and other outdoor advertising that uses “sexualised images”. So-called “lads’ magazines” could be sold in bags or stored behind “modesty boards” in shops to conceal the explicit images that feature on their covers.

The prime minister will hold meetings early in the new year with retailers and advertisers to “put a spotlight” on their conduct.

Miss Sarah Teather, the children’s minister suggested a ban on outdoor advertisements using sexualised images could be required. “Children go to more places than just their school and see advertising everywhere they go. If an advertisement is not acceptable close to a school, is it acceptable anywhere?”

Latest South African move

In the latest controversy surrounding billboards in South Africa eyebrows in especially the tourist industry are  lifting at plans to erect more than 250,000 billboards with faces of the country’s most wanted criminals across the country.

The plan, which is part of former police commissioner Bheki Cele’s anti-crime initiatives is up and running. “The campaign on the most wanted people is going ahead,” SAPS spokesperson Col Vish Naidoo  told the newspaper The New Age.

In October Cele, while still national police commissioner, said he intended publishing photographs of the country’s 247 000 most wanted suspects on billboards.

He was quoted at the time as saying: “With their names and faces displayed on billboards, their wives, girlfriends, relatives and even community members will be able to identify them. There will be no place to hide.

“We will ensure these billboards are found on every freeway and every street corner in the country,” Cele said.

Role players in the tourist industry have however expressed doubts about the wisdom of such a public and  highly visible campaign and the impression it will make on visitors to the country.

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